Local Newspaper and Its Social Media Advertising Essay

Abstract

Modern companies largely use media advertising to attract potential customers and promote products. This paper aims to use knowledge about social media to define a strategy for advertising a certain product. The social media source is chosen based on the specifics of the product that needs to be advertised.

The checklist is supposed to help clarify the steps that need to be taken to ensure the campaign’s success. Determining the risks related to the chosen approach and the appropriate selling tactic helps to analyze the chosen strategy and focus on its advantages and benefits. The exploration of the role of advertising on the Internet in raising the company’s profitability contributes to a better understanding of the mechanism used by the World Wide Web for the effective stimulation of revenues for the companies using it for business purposes.

The Product and the Social Media

The product I would advertise is a new local newspaper exploring the issues related to music concerts and festivals in the city and the region. The aim of the advertising campaign would be to attract as many readers as possible and promote the selling of monthly subscriptions. The major group of the target audience would include the local youth aged 18-28. The form of social media I would use to advertise this product is the most popular social media site – Facebook.

This social media source appears to be one of the best choices for advertising the products interesting for the youth, as young people comprise the biggest part of Facebook users and use the Web site on a daily basis. The usage of page post link ads would help to increase the chances of clicking on the link to the website, offering a subscription to the product. The usage of sponsored stories would help to attract attention to the newspaper publications interesting for a certain category of people. Besides, Facebook offers an opportunity to target the needed audience by choosing the profiles that correspond to the needed age group and location.

Checklist:

1. Identification of the target market.
2. Identification of the objective of the advertising campaign.
3. Analysis of marketing activities of the competitors.
4. Defining the budget.
5. Requesting important information from the advertiser.
6. Focus on the age group that is most interested in buying the product.
7. Focus on the local audience.
8. Use of several Facebook ad types.
9. Sticking to the budget plan for the advertising campaign.
10. Effective use of unique selling points.
11. Use of the image that represents the product and attracts the attention of the users.
12. Use of the call-to-action title motivating the users to click through the page offering to buy the product.
13. The introduction of attractive features of the product through a creative message in the text field.
14. Effective use of stories related to the product in sponsored stories ads.
15. Use of Cost per Click (CPC) model.
16. Effective assessment of results.
17. Analysis of the effectiveness of the chosen advertising approach.
18. Modification and improvement of the advertising approach based on the gained results.

Risks Associated with the Chosen Advertising Approach

• The reluctance to leave expressed in the unwillingness of Facebook users to click on a link that takes them outside Facebook (Toose, 2013). Such a situation is caused by the fact that most Facebook users visit the site to interact with family and friends and not to shop online;
• The dissatisfaction of Facebook users claiming their newsfeed is flooded with unwanted ads and the subsequent unwillingness to look through the newsfeed, which is crucial to the success of the discussed advertising approach (Toose, 2013);
• The possibility of the evolvement of abusive material somehow linked to the discussed ads due to the lack of control over the content that appears next to them in a continuously upgrading environment (Krashinsky, 2012).

Selling Tactic

The selling tactic appropriate to achieve the goals of the discussed advertising campaign is using a simple buying procedure. The abundance of steps needed to be taken prior to buying any product or service online often forces the users to abandon the shopping due to the lack of time or willingness to engage in a boring process of buying. Therefore, it would be necessary to simplify the process of buying the subscription to the newspaper as much as it is possible. By making this process contain only one or two steps, the advertiser would attract more potential buyers and raise the selling rates.

Advertising on the Internet

Advertising on the Internet has huge opportunities to raise the profitability of a company, as the World Wide Web is used by millions of people from all over the world (Kooser, n.d.). A large group of people use the Internet every day and see the ads published online. Therefore, such advertising gives an opportunity of earning big revenue by generating interest in the company. World Wide Web helps the companies to reach the people that are potentially interested in buying the products and motivate them to do it.

Besides generating interest in the product, advertising on the Internet can help to raise profitability by offering an easy and convenient shopping process. Many customers that are not willing to go somewhere to buy a product are likely to accept the possibility of buying it if they do not need to leave the house. Online shopping contributes to the revenues of many companies significantly, as such a way of buying products simplify customer-supplier relations and raises the chances of sales (Demangeot & Broderick, 2010).

References

Demangeot, C., & Broderick, A. (2010). Consumer perceptions of online shopping environments: A gestalt approach. Psychology & Marketing, 27(2), 117-140.

Kooser, A. (n.d.). How does technology improve a business? Web.

Krashinsky, S. (2012). Social media advertising’s big risk. Web.

Toose, J. (2013). Five Facebook advertising risks. Web.